Bone Crier’s Moon is an innovative fantasy, marred by a rushed romance

Kathryn Purdie’s Bone Crier’s Moon features one of the most original premises you’ll find in YA fantasy this year. Unfortunately, its central romance leaves something to be desired.

Bone Crier’s Moon is a that rare thing in YA fantasy – a story with a truly unique and original premise, one that feels like something we truly haven’t seen before. The novel, which follows the story of a group of women who have been tasked with ferrying the dead to the afterlife, is rich and atmospheric, with several truly original plot elements you won’t find in any similar story.

Known as Bone Criers or Leuresses, depending on who you ask, these women also serve an important protective function. By guiding souls to Tyus’ Underworld or Elara’s Night Heavens, they help prevent the dead from preying on the living, and keep the peace between the mortal realm and those beyond. But, like most stories in this vein, the gods require a sacrifice from each girl in the sacred order before she’s allowed to fully become a Ferrier in her own right. And that sacrifice is her one true love.

As part of her final right of passage, each would-be Bone Crier must summon her amoure – basically a soulmate – by means of an enchanted bone flute and then kill the boy they’re destined to love before a year has passed. It’s way harsh, but it’s a tradition the Bone Criers have followed for centuries.

The world of the Bone Criers is a fascinating one – they forge magical amulets based on the bones of dead animals to capture their chosen creatures strengths, and the society is entirely matriarchal, given that each Leuress must murder her amoure before they’ve had time to conceive more than a single child together. The women are strong and brave, graceful fighters and loyal friends, who have each others backs through terrible events. (Personally, I’d have loved to learn more about the rest of the Leuresses, but maybe in the next book.)

Bone Criers Moon follows the story of Ailesse, the bold and brash daughter of the Bone Crier’s matrone, or matriarch. Determined to prove herself to be a worthy heir to her mother’s position, Ailesse is ready to undertake her final rite of passage, kill her amoure and become a great Ferrier in her own right. Things, naturally, do not quite go according to plan.

Instead, when Ailesse plays the bone flute, she summons Bastien, an angry boy who has been bent on revenge against all Bone Criers since one lured his father to his own death many years prior. Bastien, it turns out, has been plotting for the chance to kill a Bone Crier ever since, and has been lying in wait near local bridges hoping to spot one and take his chance.

You can see where this is going already, probably.

Though Bastien and his friends kidnap Ailesse in the hopes of luring the rest of the Bone Criers to their deaths – and because he’s reluctant to straight up murder her after Ailesse informs him that by responding to her siren son their lives are now connected, and if one dies the other does as well – the two eventually end up growing closer, and falling in love. Is it because of the magic of Ailesse’s flute? Or are they really soul mates?

It’s difficult to tell and, unfortunately, Bone Crier’s Moon is pretty uninterested in telling me. Ailesse and Bastien fall in love entirely too quickly, with little context for how either of their feelings toward one another change. It’s about five steps from insta-love, if you ask me, with little to go on beyond lingering glances  and cheesy internal monologues.

Here’s the thing – as a reader, I want to root for Ailesse and Bastien. And, sometimes, it’s true, I do. Their relationships springs from one of my all-time favorite romance tropes, after all. But the thing is, the story doesn’t spend enough time on the couple’s transition from enemies to lovers for the story’s presumably endgame couple. After all, when Bone Crier’s Moon begins, Bastien wants to revenge murder Ailesse – or really, any Bone Crier, he’s not super picky – and by the end of it, he’s willing to sacrifice his own life for her, and I honestly don’t know if I entirely believe in that transition.

In an ideal world, the story might have been better served by waiting until the second novel to put our two leads together romantically. It would have made a legitimate triangle out of the messy introduction of the hot prince at the end of the novel, and it would have given Purdie a bit more time to let Ailesse and Bastien’s relationship develop in a way that felt gradual and organic.

That said, there’s certainly a lot to recommend this story. Ailesse is a feisty, can-do sort of heroine, but it’s her best friend Sabine who may turn out to be the story’s standout character. A Leuress as well, she’s deeply uncomfortable with many aspects of her people’s culture, and has little interest in doing many of the things she’s expected to do in order to become a full fledge Ferrier. (She can’t even face killing animals to acquire the necessary grace bones, how could she manage to murder a person to complete her final right of passage?) But her loyalty and love for Ailesse is strong enough that she does step out of her comfort zone in new ways to try and find her friend – and to solve a mystery a the very heart of their order. How she’ll develop in this novel’s sequel is one of the things I’m most looking forward to seeing.

Bone Crier’s Moon is available everywhere now.